THERESA MAY has been told to 'stop faffing around' and make a final decision on Britain's post-Brexit trade relationship with the EU by Labour's Emily Thornberry.

Theresa May has been told to 'stop faffing around' on Britain's trading relationship with the European Union after Brexit by Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, who also claimed that the Prime Minister's "customs partnership" proposal is unworkable.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics, Mrs Thornberry told host Vicki Young: “The problem is that what she’s put forwards doesn’t work, and she kind of accepts that it doesn’t work.

“She says that she has to work on it further, that they need to refine it, and yet we’re running out of time.

“We’ve had 20 months to work on this, and yet they still can’t even agree amongst themselves what they want as an alternative to being in a customs union.

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A customs union with the EU after Brexit is 'inevitable', Emily Thornberry claimed

“Why don’t they just accept the inevitable - we need to be in a customs union, and stop faffing around."

Cabinet divisions over Britain’s future relationship with the EU were blown into the open earlier this week when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson dismissed May’s customs proposal as “crazy” in an interview with the Daily Mail.

Mr Johnson said the plan would create a “whole new web of bureaucracy” and prevent the UK from pursuing a truly independent trade policy.

On Wednesday, Mrs May suffered another damaging defeat in the House of Lords, when it voted to pass an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill that would keep Britain in the European Economic Area, effectively binding the UK to EU rules for years after leaving.

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It was the Government's 14th Brexit defeat in the Lords and opens up the possibility for Remainer MPs to push the amendment onto the statute books in a key vote later this month.

Furious Brexiteers claimed the vote was an attempt to reverse the referendum result.

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told BBC Radio 4’s Today: "It is not acceptable for an unelected house to try to block the democratic will of the British people.”

He aid that the vote opened up the possibility of “delaying exit from the EU indefinitely".

The result elicited fury from Iain Duncan Smith, who said he was “absolutely in favour” of reform to the upper chamber. He told peers: “You are unelected, you are unrepresentative and you do not have the right to tell the elected chamber how they should conduct their affairs.”

Mrs May is under pressure to clarify the Government's final position on a customs arrangement with Europe before a crunch EU summit later this month.